Al Qaeda Accused of Using Male Rape to Recruit Suicide Bombers

According to Algerian militant Abu Bacir El Assimi, Islamic terrorists rape young men as a means of recruitment for suicide bombings. Rape creates a social stigma and fear, according to reports, that leave Muslims prepared to die.

"The sexual act on young recruits aged between 16 to 19 was a means to urge them to commit suicide operations."

Both rape and homosexual acts under Sharia law are punishable by death.

News sources say an autopsy revealed a suspected terrorist bomber killed during an attempted terrorist attack on a security installation in Algeria may have been raped. The report presents the autopsy as finding: "a large tear in the anus of the terrorist, which confirms the sexual abuse. In addition, semen analysis is underway to determine the perpetrator.” The victim of the alleged abuse was 22 years old who was said to have joined a terrorist group in March 2008.

If reports are true about sexual coercion of males or male rape being used to recruit young men to die in acts of terrorism, the concerns about how men are treated after male rape indicate the level of shame and indignities suffered. It was reported in Dubai in 2007 a very young French boy, Alex, age 15, who was kidnapped and sexually assaulted.

The victim immediately reported the crime, but reports say the police doctor “seemed" intent on proving there was no rape, just a consensual sexual act between three men and a 15 year-old gay boy. "

The report goes on to say "Homosexuality is against the law in the UAE, where anyone found guilty of sodomy faces years in jail.... the French consul, was so worried a case was being built against Alex as an illegal homosexual he advised the boy and his mother to flee Dubai before he was arrested. " In this case someone claiming male rape was threatened with punishment, showing how harsh rape victims are treated.

USC University Professor Stanley Harris MD writes in his treatise Military Male Rape, Homophobia, and Gay History that “during the past 3500 years, the traumatic rape of Judaeo-Christian military men by their enemies may have contributed to the development of cultural homophobia.” Rape, according to this author, was done as a way of punishment, torture, coercion and a host of indignities that brought about an abhorrence and fear of homosexuality. So not only Islam has had strong aversion to homosexuality and has perpetrated violence against gays, according to Harris.

Not all leaders and their followers of Islam believe homosexuality should be treated negatively. Imam Muhsin Hendricks maintains contemporary Muslim scholars should revisit the Quran and the teachings and laws of Islam and examine the context in which the texts were written, He declares the “prophet Muhammad never dealt with homosexuality in a direct way. Neither did he call for the punishment or persecution of homosexuals.”

Male rape, which in Dubai has been treated only as homosexuality and not accorded the fact it can be non consensual, remains a topic seldom discussed in either the Islamic or Western world to the same extent female rape is reviewed in the news. One reporter/professor examines the phenomenon in the United States, underlining the statistics of male rape to be 3% according to crime reports and yet the belief among many is male rape occurs predominantly among homosexuals. For that reason it often goes unreported or unpunished.

Male terrorists drafted into suicide bombing by rape reveals the fear some feel about homosexuality and male rape, according to the Sun article. Education and reason, in both Islamic and the Judaeo-Christian communities, as Harris and Hendricks underline, may make a difference in how people view male rape and homosexuality. In that way terrorists could lose rape as an effective weapon against young men in recruitment, if indeed that’s what they do.